★empreintes DIGITALes
Jalons
Eight acousmatic works by Francis Dhomont spanning fifteen years, from his only purely electronic piece of 1985-86 to Lettre de Sarajevo and the swallows of Vol d’Arondes, several of them prizewinners. Disque de l’année at the Prix Opus 2002-03.
Cycle du Son
Francis Dhomont's four-part homage to Pierre Schaeffer and fifty years of musique concrète (1989-98), built from the first movement of the Étude aux objets, with Machaut, Pierre Henry's door and a list of “inventors of the treasure” along the way.
Impacts Intérieurs
Five works by Denis Smalley from 1976 to 1992, including Wind Chimes, Valley Flow and the Golden Nica-winning Clarinet Threads with Roger Heaton, plus Piano Nets with Philip Mead, all remastered by the composer for this 2004 edition.
Sources / Scènes
Four acousmatic works by Denis Smalley from 1974 to 2000, each grown from one sound source: Derek Shiel's metal sculptures, air in Cretan garden pots, two water recordings, and the drone of Northumbrian pipes in the early GRM piece Pentes.
Rendu Visible
Three works by Darren Copeland from 1993 to 1996 built on real-world sound, including Night Camera, whose three scenes unfold inside recordings from the World Soundscape Collection at Simon Fraser University.
Perdu et Retrouvé
Eight fixed-medium works by Darren Copeland from 1991 to 2003, tied by the tension between losing and finding: a CNN eyewitness account of 9/11, the voices of Marconi and Eckersly, a 36-hour train route from London to Moscow. DVD-Audio.
Action / Réaction
Daniel Scheidt's software compositions of 1986 to 1990, in which an interactive computer system listens and responds to improvising soloists: percussionist Trevor Tureski, clarinettists Claude Schryer and Lori Freedman, soprano Catherine Lewis and trombonist George E Lewis.
Le Voyage d’Hiver
Daniel Leduc's electroacoustic music drama on Wilhelm Müller's 24 Winterreise poems, spoken by actor Erwin Potitt and closed by a Cocteau-inspired coda, framed by three shorter works from 1994 to 1997.
Zoo
Four radio works by Dan Lander from 1988 to 1992, three cut with a razor blade on 1/4" tape: a dismantling of radio conventions with Gregory Whitehead, a portrait of his back injury through friends' memories, and a Toronto zoo heard as machine.
Autour
Four soundscape compositions by Claude Schryer from 1995 to 1997, arranged as the four cardinal points of North America: Québec City, Mexico, Vancouver and a Montréal harbour symphony of boat horns, trains and bells joined by Jean Derome and Tom Walsh.
Les Corps Éblouis
A single 23-minute acousmatic work by Christian Calon, made at the GRM in 1992-93 and revised in 1994 entirely from electric guitar sounds transformed in a spiral of metamorphoses; second prize at Bourges in 1994 and two distinctions at Prix Ars Electronica.
Fractures
Four acousmatic works by Christian Bouchard from 1997 to 2003: crowds, parades and a friend caught in a blind spot in Angle mort, three soundscape miniatures, and the two Parcelles, sounds of the world recorded and asked to pose.
Lumière dans la Nuit
Three GRM commissions by the Lyon composer and ornithologist Bernard Fort, from 1992 to 2002: a meditation on time and loss, a sunrise on a lake in the Danube Delta full of herons and geese, and a long walk on crunching mountain snow.
Impalpables
Three works from 1986 to 1994 in which Annette Vande Gorne sets texts by the Belgian poet Werner Lambersy, from Noces noires, read in a near whisper by the poet himself, to Le ginkgo, commissioned by L’Année nouvelle. Reissue. CD-R.
Tao
Annette Vande Gorne's five-part acousmatic cycle from 1983 to 1991, one piece for each of the Taoist elements, moving from the raw water recordings of Eau to Terre, an 8-channel GRM commission dedicated to François Bayle. CD-R.
Quatre Poèmes
Four fixed-medium works by Pierre Alexandre Tremblay from 2014 to 2020, conceived as poems rather than chapters: a 28-channel ode to post-industrial northern England, a cycle on defining words, an attempt at mindfulness and a saturated Newsfeed.
Trajectoires
Nine acousmatic works by the Belgian composer and cinema foley artist Marie-Jeanne Wyckmans from 1991 to 2021, all made at Métamorphoses d’Orphée, including a trilogy held up as a mirror to the pandemic and homages to Francis Ponge and Francis Dhomont.
Into the Forest
A four-part acousmatic cycle by Louis Dufort on the forest, drawn from many treks in the Canadian Rockies and Québec’s boreal forest, developed from 2016 and finalised in 2020-21, moving from a pastoral opening to an abstract ode to nature.
Mélancolie
Five works Robert Normandeau composed between 2013 and 2021 for a dome of loudspeakers, heard here as stereo “postcards”: a bandoneon-only Melancholia, a commission for the Montréal metro's 50th anniversary with the OSM's new octobass, and material from Jorane's stage project.
Réverbères
Five multichannel works by Roxanne Turcotte from 2014 to 2021, centred on Les oiseaux de Nias, a half-hour piece for five wind soloists, a choir of 25 bird calls and fixed medium about songbird trafficking in Indonesia.